The factory Mercedes team - George Russell heading Kimi Antonelli - duly finished one-two in Melbourne, exhibiting more power, more downforce, more grip and more balance than all of their opposition - and capped all of that with perfect strategy calls. Ferrari pushed them hardest, with Charles Leclerc beautifully taking the lead into T1 and exchanging early-lap power surges with George Russell, but weird strategies quickly knocked them back to P3-P4, with Leclerc crossing the line 0.6sec ahead of his team-mate, Sir Lewis Hamilton. A messy day for McLaren-Mercedes began with Oscar Piastri crashing into the barriers on his pre-grid out-lap and Lando Norris finishing only P5. Red Bull-RBPT Ford's Max Verstappen finished P6 after starting near the back of the grid on hard Pirellis, but his team-mate, Isack Hadjar, who had qualified P3, was out of the race early with a PU blow-up. In this video, Peter looks back - with a somewhat critical eye - at this first race of the new F1.
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